The story of Sega NAOMI (New Arcade Operation Machine Idea) is a tale of a hardware platform that was essentially a "Super Dreamcast". Released in 1998, it shared its architecture with Sega's final home console but featured double the system and graphics RAM and quadruple the sound memory. While many of its hits like Crazy Taxi and Marvel vs. Capcom 2 became Dreamcast staples, a massive library of exclusive ROMs remained trapped in the arcade cabinet—some due to technical demands and others simply because the Dreamcast died too soon. The "Lost" Exclusives
Performance: It uses an updated PowerVR2 GPU with faster VRAM bandwidth, allowing for superior 3D graphics and speed.
The NAOMI board and the Dreamcast both utilize the Hitachi SH-4 CPU and PowerVR2 GPU. However, the NAOMI was modular and significantly more powerful in its standard configuration, featuring: Double the Main RAM: 32MB vs. the Dreamcast's 16MB. Triple the Video RAM: 16MB vs. the Dreamcast's 8MB.
NAOMI had two media types:
Some NAOMI games received home ports that were compromised, making the arcade ROMs superior.